1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a specimen preprocessing system which automatically preprocesses live body samples such as blood and urine so as to be subjected to analytical processing, and more particularly to a specimen preprocessing system provided with a plug opening unit for opening a plug of a specimen container.
2. Description of the Related Art
A specimen rack is generally structured to support approximately one to five specimen containers. The specimen container is filled with the specimen such as blood or urine collected from a subject and sealed with a plug to prevent spill of the specimen. The specimen preprocessing system is provided with a plug opening unit for opening the plug and a plug closing unit for closing the plug again for performing the specimen dispensing. Meanwhile, the specimen container may be of various types each having different height, configuration and plug configuration. The aforementioned generally employed plug opening unit requires the specimen containers of the same type (height, configuration, and plug configuration) to be mounted in the same rack.
The user is required to confirm the type of the specimen containers to be mounted in the rack, thus putting a certain strain on the user. Inappropriate mounting of the containers in the rack may result in an error causing time loss due to reconfirmation, and delay in the time from the subsequent step to the inspection report.
The type of the specimen container with the plug to be mounted in the specimen rack is limited, thus deteriorating the system flexibility.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2001-318104 discloses a rack with a mechanism for adjusting the height of the member for supporting each bottom of the specimen containers for the purpose of leveling the specimen containers.
The disclosed process, however, requires the inspecting engineer to adjust the height of the support member for supporting each bottom of the containers so as to level the specimen containers, which is hardly different from the process for distributing the specimen containers to be leveled for each rack.